Good communication skills are essential to being a good producer. This week, I had some successful attempts at communication, as well as a few failures that taught me a lot of things that I would like to improve in the future.

I did not do my best at communicating in the morning. I had a general idea of what I wanted to do for my digital video, but there was some confusion over which editor I was supposed to be working with to develop the idea. When I finally figured out who exactly I should be speaking to, I still had some trouble working with the editor to determine what I should be doing to make sure I fulfilled my digital requirement. Ultimately, my idea for a video was not approved because the editor in the afternoon didn't think that it advanced the Orange County fire story. All of this confusion made for a pretty frustrating morning. In the future, I want to arrive for my shift with an extremely detailed plan for my digital video so that I can tell the social editor exactly what I'd like to do so that hopefully my work can get published.

One of my most successful communication efforts of the day was my work on the Harvey Weinstein story. While I was in the morning digital meeting, I saw that Ronan Farrow's New Yorker piece had been published and that the piece contained rape allegations against Weinstein. The new details were very shocking to me, and I knew that this was a story that was worth pursuing further. I notified the producers in the meeting, and they began to work it into the day's coverage. Later in the morning, I saw that USC senior Tiana Lowe had started a petition to demand that USC not take money that Harvey Weinstein had pledged to the School of Cinematic Arts. I told the executive producer and lead producer and reached out to Tiana to arrange an interview for the afternoon. We successfully had a multimedia journalist (MJ) do this interview not only for our show, but also for a digital video that was pushed out on social after another MJ edited the video in the afternoon. As I was working on graphics in the afternoon, I spotted the story in The Hollywood Reporter that said the school was not going to take Weinstein's donation. I notified the lead and executive producers, and helped communicate to an MJ how to reach out to the school to get a statement. I think being proactive in communicating to producers about this story and staying aware of the story throughout the day helped us get all of the elements on the air.

I learned a lot about the importance of communication that will hopefully help me be a more effective producer next week.

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